Setting the Table for Mobility in 2014

This past December, Irwin Lazar posted a great blog post describing the key topics he will cover throughout 2014 in the UC/collaboration space. As a new member of the Nemertes team, I thought it would be great to kick things off by following suit and describe some of the areas I’ll be covering in mobility. The information we collect from our 2014-15 Enterprise Technology Benchmark will give us great insight on the effectiveness of enterprises’ mobility strategies, and we can’t wait to see what surprises are in store for 2014 in this rapidly evolving space.

Mobile App Ecosystem Smart devices already have a firm foothold in the enterprise, but what types of apps will employees use to actually get work done? As a cost-friendly, OS-agnostic solution for apps, we saw HTML5 apps surge in 2013. However, enterprises still look to native apps as tried-and-true productivity tools or when they demand for capabilities beyond what HTML5 apps offer. As enterprises begin to move beyond just securing devices, we’ll be covering the app ecosystems on corporate-approved devices, measuring the growth or shrinkage of app types and possibly the emergence of new app types such as Amazon’s cloud-based AppStream service.

Wearable DevicesGoogle hasn’t even launched an official app store for Google Glass, but businesses are already building business cases and proof of concepts for the wearable technology. Wearable technology, especially Glass, can bring significant benefits to many industries, but questions abound: How will privacy concerns shake out? How will enterprises secure these devices? What third-parties vendors will jump on the bandwagon early and forge applications and platforms for this new frontier of smart technology? It’s a nascent technology, and with Google promising to make the official Glass launch this year, we’ll be watching closely as Glass goes through its growing pains.

As I previously mentioned, our 2014-15 Benchmark Report will cover these topics and much more. If you are an IT practitioner at an end-user organization, email us at research@nemertes.com to participate in a confidential benchmark interview and we’ll share our results when the report is complete.